A Curveball
I received an email from a former reporter I quoted extensively in my introductory pieces. It was not what I expected.
In my initial four-part introductory piece, I liberally quoted work of the former Globe and Mail reporter Kimberly Noble. She worked extensively on the Edper group in the late 1980s and 1990s, publishing many excellent long-form articles. Even though I placed her on the Edper mailing list, I sent her a separate, direct note with a link in the event that the Substack was channeled into a non-primary inbox.
In my mind I making courteous gesture to an individual whose work I thought excellent and cited liberally. It was not received that way.
To my surprise, her response if not outright hostile is at least unfriendly. Here it is in its entirety.
I find it very strange that Ms. Noble’s response to being praised was to notify me that including her on an email list is a violation of Canadian law. She also carefully pointed out why she could not correspond with me, although I never sought her input for the series; she further request that I stop attributing the work to her directly. On this point, I thought I might have made an error in the attribution – so I checked.
Representative Headline from the Edper Puzzle series of articles
Source: Globe and Mail.
As is clear from the example, I credited Ms. Noble with the work because her name alone is on the byline.
I fully understand Ms. Noble’s desire to be removed from the email list. Between the years of work, legal threats and the scuppered book deal, I might want to move on as well.
I do not, however, understand either the underlying tone of the email, the no correspondence declaration, or what appears to be a strong desire to be disassociated from her fine work from the past. That seems particularly odd, the opposite of the journalistic pride. Could there be another factor in play?
Bethany McLean published an article in Fortune magazine called “Is Enron Overpriced?” in 2001. Ms. McLean is still widely credited with being the first journalist to raise questions about Enron publicly. Other journalists, such as Bob Woodward and the Boston Globe’s Spotlight team are regularly praised for work done many years ago. They are all proud, and I’m not surprised. Journalists that produce work that has had an impact and stands the test of time should be proud of their efforts.
Does Ms. Noble have legal concerns? If so, does it stem from a settlement agreement from events in the 1990s, or more recent? Brookfield has been known to take a heavy-handed approach with critics. Independent journalist Roddy Boyd noted that his questions to Brookfield investor relations resulted in legal threats.
I would be very interested to hear what others think about the matter.
I removed Ms. Noble from the mail list and did not respond to her email, as requested.
I would suggest that Ms. Noble might suspect you are using her work from years ago, on a previous iteration of Brookfield, as part of a campaign to disparage the current iteration with what appears, so far, to be no original research whatever. Her message might be: 'Do your own work. My work is more than twenty years old and since I no longer follow the company I have no idea if it has any relevance today. Your use of my name suggests an endorsement of your current campaign, which I have no desire to endorse.'
There is a lot of slimy financial "analysis" out there today, much of it based on innuendo and designed primarily to attract clicks. You have published at least four articles on Brookfield entirely devoid of original research, relying on other people's work from long ago to suggest there is something shady going on. So far, clickbait would appear to be the most appropriate description. It is not surprising that Ms. Noble would not care to be associated with it.
Hey Keith, Roddy Boyd here. This is great stuff but then all your stuff is great. I'm sorry I'm just getting to read it all now.
Perhaps, as a reporter, albeit one nowhere near as talented as Ms. Nobles, I can be of some help here. Are Ms. Nobles' sentiments a bit archly expressed? Yes. But her conduct is assuredly rational once a few nuances are understood.
The first is that notwithstanding the tradition of generally close governmental and economic cooperation between the U.S. and Canada -- albeit one that in recent years developed into name-calling matches between the countries leaders -- there are some stark
cultural differences, none more so than the role investigative reporting (as a proxy for unfettered free speech) plays in civil society.
I would sum up Canada's press protection laws as designed to "protect the people from the press," whereas in the U.S., despite a general partisan fracture over nearly all else, there is widespread consensus that the role of journalism is vital and accordingly, that the legal and executive branches have almost no basis to curtail those rights.
With that in mind, Edper put Ms. Noble and G&M's Report on Business through hell back in the day: with lots of legal demand letters, hostile meetings with lawyers, brutal pre-publication reviews, and constant political and cultural pressure brought to bear on the paper's leadership. Of course in the U.S. this happens too, but the reporter can be confident that none of this can restrict the right to publish. That's NOT the case in Canada.
And given Edper's secrecy and then socio-cultural prominence in Ontario, much of her reporting relied on cultivated source networks that she had promised to protect. But if Edper had sued her under Canada's notorious libel laws, she would have been subject to a brutal multi-year trial where her entire reporting methodology would have been fair game. For an investigative reporter in Canada, that is difficult to come back from.
There is also the question of Ms. Noble not knowing you or your intentions. I'm pretty sure numbers of U.S.-based short-sellers have reached out to her over the years to "pick her brain" on Brookfield's origins. But Canadian law looks at short-selling the same as investigative reporting, i.e. while legally permitted, it is more culturally suitable for the no holds barred U.S. system. So if she would engage with shorts or other research analysts, her risk would be binary: They would get prospective profits while enjoying U.S. First Amendment legal protections, she would get a multi-year court date.
While I can't speak for Ms. Noble, it is doubtful she missed the legal threat Brookfield's lawyers sent me in my 2013 article. I am confident she concluded that Flatt, Cockwell et al haven't changed a single stripe in nearly 30 years and that the risk-reward of writing about these guys was still miserably skewed towards "risk."
Hope that helps. I look forward to more of your excellent work.